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Warranty firm SquareTrade pitted the iPad mini against the iPad 3 and Nexus 7 in a series of tests ... which one will win?

The tests are quite severe. Each tablet is dropped in a number of orientations - face down, on their corners, and into water.

While SquareTrade declared the iPad mini the winner, I'm inclined to say that the Nexus 7 won. It seemed to shut itself off after the drop test but it just needed restarting. Overall, it seemed to survive the tests best -- although all were so harsh that I wouldn't expect any consumer electronics device to have survived unscathed.

As for the water test, I'm not sure as to the value of this. In my experience devices react differently to immersion and it's hard to get any consistency when immersing a device. I've seen an iPhone survive a good long dunk in a puddle, and another die after rain got into it.